Like this:

Related

10 Responses to “Robe or No?”

I can’t speak for everyone. But I can say that as far as the article attempts to make absolute statements, they are false. After all, it only take a single counterexample, and I found myself to be that. Maybe It’s because I’m listening more that I’m watching? Maybe I hear the sermons most often in the form of an mp3 while I’m sitting in a cafe.

And you know what? People who comment on pant pleats will comment on robe pleats.

A regular, indistinct business suit emphasizes the importance of heeding the Word of God, instead of worrying about why the teaching pastor looks different than everyone else. Allow this example to make the point–after a service that I attended in a church I was visiting, I overheard two women talking immediately after the service. At first, I thought that these women were going to make a comment about the sermon that had been given. Instead, they began talking about something quite different. One woman said, “Why was the pastor wearing a dress, when no one else was doing so?” The other responded (truly) by saying, “It wasn’t a dress, it was a Genevan Robe. The reasons for which he wears it are extra-biblical, and they take too long to explain succinctly, so let me give you the URL to an article I recently read on ‘A Puritan’s Mind’.” I was taken back. Instead of concentrating on the Word of God being preached, these women (and it could have just as easily been the men) commented on how the pastor looked that day.

A robe is a piece of cloth. It has no inherent symbolic meaning. Any meaning it has is in the minds of the people who see it.

The author makes many assertions about how such a garment affects those who see it, but I suspect that most of those assertions are not true. People who understand what the robe symbolizes understand because they have been explicitly taught about it, or perhaps socialized into this way of seeing it.

So, for some congregations, this could be right on. But certainly not for all.

His assertion that the gravity of the office of preacher is communicated by the robe completely misses the pretty obvious cultural fact that, to more and more people in the West, religious garments imply hypocrisy and engender suspicion.

In addition, I don’t see any biblical reason to treat the preacher as not-himself when he’s doing the preaching, any more than I think that the Pope becomes suddenly infallible when he declares himself to be speaking ex cathedra.

Maybe my disagreement with this article is more basic; one of his first statements is, “When people walk into the church, they should be leaving the secular to enter into the sacred – the arena of God’s people for corporate worship. ”

I just don’t know what this means in a New Testament context. I don’t see a discontinuity between inside-church and outside-church.

If he’s concerned about the lack of reverence and awe for God in times of corporate worship, then I would probably agree with him. But trying to increase awe and reverence by making church more “churchy” and less “worldy” seems no better than trying to increase spiritual fervor by getting an upbeat praise band.

It is the Word of God preached and sung that is the center of the corporate assembly; any trappings that surround these activities can be evaulated based on how well they succeed in pointing to the Word for the people in that particular culture and congregation.

Again, the robe practice may indeed help some people in some churches across the world, but the tone of his article seems to ascribe some sort of transcendant symbolic meaning to the robe, which it does not have.

I agree with everyone. The whole argument was ridiculous and paper thin. It’s likely welcomed by some groups, but to make a universal statement that all churches / cultures / congregations would be better off if they weren’t so ‘secularized’ is just absurd.

I do enjoy how frank everyone is. The tone of the article demands it methinks.

Although I am always looking for a good reason to discard the biforcated standard of male raiment (pants), I’m afraid this article does not give me defensible grounds to wear a man-dress. 😦

While I was reading the article I kept thinking of Luke 20:45ff:

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts…”

Now, I don’t think this is some proof-text condemning robe wearing. But I do think it should be a warning to us as christians for how we present ourselves. Are we wearing/saying/doing something to make ourselves appear holy before men?